US and Iraq

Intelligent observation

Intelligence services are undergoing something of a renaissance in these dangerous times, recovering from the battering they took because their own careful work was "spun" too often by unscrupulous politicians. Few have forgotten the UK government's notoriously dodgy 45-minute warning of Saddam Hussein's ability to attack with weapons of mass destruction he turned out not to possess, or the spurious accounts from Washington of a link between Baghdad and al-Qaida's 9/11 onslaught on the US. So it is encouraging to hear that it is now the considered view of the 16 different agencies that make up the enormous US intelligence community that the war in Iraq has helped produce a new generation of fanatical jihadists and increased the threat of global terrorism.

Not only does this American finding have the ring of truth about it, but millions of ordinary people in Britain, Europe, the US and far beyond have reached the same bleak conclusion from a daily torrent of news, analysis and information that is freely available to all. It needs neither spy satellites, informers, nor highly trained analysts to observe the rage and fury that has been generated by Iraq: we have heard it in native Yorkshire accents from the young men who brought mayhem to the London underground on 7/7; from public opinion polls; from countless demonstrations across the Arab and Muslim worlds; from Iraqis, Shia as well as Sunnis, who hated the Ba'athist tyrant but who have paid an intolerable price for their liberation from his odious regime. Events in Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, mixed in with Fallujah, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and heavily spiced by anger and resentment at perceived double standards, have added to this poisonous brew.

Obvious though it may be to state that Iraq has become a "cause celebre for jihadists", the importance of this part of the US National Intelligence Estimate is that it flatly contradicts George Bush's upbeat version of the state of play just weeks before the midterm congressional elections, in which Iraq is playing a central role: thus the president's distinctly peevish tone when he was forced, under Democratic pressure, to declassify part of the report in response to a timely leak in the New York Times.

Mr Bush's argument, developed since his absurd "mission accomplished" speech in May 2003, is that Iraq is a central front in the "war on terror" and that a defeat for extremists there will be a serious blow to extremists worldwide. Tony Blair uses the same line, telling the Labour party conference on Tuesday that it would be wrong to abandon Iraq to al-Qaida and sectarian death squads. Both president and prime minister are right to say that jihadists existed before March 2003: there was 9/11 itself of course, but also the attack on the World Trade Centre a decade earlier, the bombing of US embassies in Africa in 1998 and Osama bin Laden's sinister "declaration of war against Crusaders and Jews". What they are both wrong to ignore is the crucial question of whether war in Iraq helped or hindered the legitimate effort to defend democracies from terrorist attack.

Arguing about the past often triggers impatient official responses such as "let's move on" or "we are where we are". But shutting down debate about old mistakes is likely to lead to new ones in the future. Iraq is a bloody and hopeless mess, the situation in Afghanistan deteriorating alarmingly, Iran is a grave worry, and the need for progress between Israel and the Palestinians more urgent than ever. These issues need to be aired. The row about the US intelligence estimate is about honest analysis and political spin. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is not known for plain speaking: still, his blunt view, expressed in Washington this week, is that the invasion of Iraq has indeed made the world a far more dangerous place. General Musharraf and America's spies are right. Messrs Bush and Blair are wrong.